One of my favourite things about moving to London has been, surprisingly, my commute. Spending hours on trains and buses every day gives me plenty of undisturbed reading time (unless I'm on the Victoria line at 8 am, in which case just managing to breath takes enough focus.) Here's what I read in May, mostly underground.

I write a lot. This blog is the tip of the iceberg. But seeing as writing is both my job and my hobby, I have (in spite of myself) built up some sort of routine. It helps me get into the mindset where I can shut off my internal dialogue and just write.

They say that the definition of madness is doing the same things repeatedly and expecting different results, which means this culture of constant emotional expression devoid of action is pretty damn mad.

For some people, having their shit together means being happily married with a little brood of kids, a paid off mortgage, and shiny hair. For some, it means managing to pay the bills, get laundry done, shower once in a while, and smile sometimes. For some, it means passing out drunk on a front lawn less than three times a week.

Look, sometimes in life you have to work with whatever your deity of choice gives you. Other times, you get to choose your raw material. And if it feels like you need to force yourself or trick yourself or reward yourself into reading, you’re doing it wrong. You get to choose what you read.

“It is very difficult to go through life when your core belief about yourself is that you are incompetent and do not count. When you have no sense of your own value, you are like a leaf in the wind, dependent on what others think of you to know who you are.” ― Valerie Porr

It goes on and on. It becomes a default. Any tiny setback or mishap or mistake and it’s the end of the world. Everything is a sign that you’re going to die alone and broke with no friends. No matter how well things so, you’re always anxious. You’re always imagining death and destruction and misery.

It’s like watching a poker match on TV where you can see everyone’s hands. It seems so obvious how the game is going to go, how it should end, the decisions everyone should make. When we look backwards, we get to see all the hands and in hindsight everything seems obvious.

It was November so it was dark by that point. Having consumed my third beer, plus swigs of whiskey mixed with vodka (vile) from someone’s hip flask, I felt overwhelmed and crawled into one of the five tents — a 2-person tent which within minutes contained 12 people. It started raining. I fell asleep. We’d later find out that night had the heaviest rainfall the area had experienced for years.

Kill your darlings (Verb)- To quit, leave behind, say no to, discard or in some way separate yourself from something you are fond of, attached to, or spent a lot of time getting, but which either never benefited you, no longer benefits you, or is harming you.